If you’re Singaporean and you surf Youtube a lot, you might have asked “Where are the video bloggers and Youtubers of Singapore?”

If you recall our “Crowdsourcing the Media” presentation at Nexus 2007 (watch video), the “Singapore” search results on Youtube lead to an estimated 23,000 videos. That was on 24th March this year. Less than three months later, the count has now grown to an amazing 35,100 videos (just over 50% increase). What gives?

Singaporean made (or related) online videos are abound. In the past, we had to search for them, but now the mainstream media has done a great job in becoming the primary aggregator for local videos and photos.

There seems to be a bias to this report though… As James Seng explained, the news spread seemed more like a self-promotion for ST’s STOMP, since it’s plastered with STOMP branding and it fails to mention local bloggers who might have been the forefront citizen journalists for Singapore.

Understanding our socio-political landscape, I can comprehend why this might be the case. Hopefully, the media ecology here will be better connected over time, instead of the mainstream media and blogosphere referencing each other, without much acknowledgment. It’s as if we live in two separate worlds, yet remaining dependent on one another.

We’re already seeing our national newspaper, The Straits Times, opening up as seen in their web site’s recent redesign. Two key features stuck me as being progressive…

First, the ST forum section now allows readers to directly comment on a submitted letter. Previously all you could do was read, write a letter response and send it in. While it might be more work for ST, it’s serving a public good which all newspapers should be engaged in. We’re already seeing good reporting of current affairs, with greater involvement of the public into the generation of news itself (as seen in the left screencap). This is great since it lets everyone, including the government, gauge public sentiments towards new public policies.

Second, more emphasis on video reporting. The Straits Times actually send their journalists on-location to shoot videos. I initially found this surprising, since the television news media already specializes in that (on their own web sites), and they’d be somewhat competing with their affiliate STOMP. However, it may be a matter of positioning against competitors, rather than within the organization. While STOMP adopts a more laissez-faire approach to their publicly submitted reporting, The Straits Times’ videos would stand to be a more authoritative relative of it. Also, we will soon have to shed the notion that the Singapore Press Holdings is limited to print, since the online media affords the publishing company more media channels.

Despite these two great features of the Straits Times web site, my biggest gripe with it has always been how its still subscription-based. Perhaps more research into online advertising is needed here, because I see this as a major hindrance to the “top of mind” significance of Singapore on a global level.

Imagine, the lack of news from Singapore pretty much leaves us as black hole in the online media landscape. All the effort in bringing talented Singaporeans home (i.e. Contact Singapore) could be easily resolved by making our national newspaper essentially free and accessible to everyone. Just by knowing what goes on back home creates a sense of connectedness, preventing Singaporeans abroad from losing touch and potentially interested in returning. The same would go apply for foreigners interested in Singapore. If there were no news, there’s be less cultural understanding of how our country functions. My argument is whether the financial gains made by ST’s online subscription is worth the lost presence of national news on the Internet. While there are alternative means to getting news about Singapore, nothing would beat getting it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Aside 1: To help foster more Singaporean videobloggers, I’ll be giving a public talk entitled “Youtube and beyond…” at the National Library at 6pm, 19th June 2007. I’ll be sharing my tips to uploading great looking videos online. I’ll also be exploring video services beyond Youtube, by showing the neat tricks which some of the other free video sharing sites can do. Check it out!

Aside 2: Interestingly, Youtube’s no. 1 search result for the keyword “Singapore” lead to the complete version of Singapore Rebel, a film our local government banned from being shown locally.

i like youtube, but i can’t stand poor quality shakey cameras from a mobile phone. (I’m guilty of such videos – but it’s the best i can do when there’s no camcorder nearby and we need to shoot things on the fly.)

good video blogging is still an art, there is a tonne of USELESS videos out there. i like democratisation and given a voice to the rest of the public, but as much as conversations are taking place, are they the kind of conversations we want taking place?

http://theory.isthereason.com Kevin

@brian: You’ve got part of it there. By having more eyes on the street, we have more to pick from to watch. Typically, interesting ones get filtered to the top, some silly, some amazing.

It’s hope that more of us engage in video as a form of social discourse, to talk about issues we sometimes talk about on our blogs, but could be made more persuasive over video.

Technology now exists for us to work with video as if it were a text blog, leaving video responses, commenting and linking to particular frames of a video and so on. By showing these fundamentals, I’m hoping that the local blogosphere would get more creative with video.

http://harmlessbananas.blogspot.com brian

i totally agree with your enthusiasm about video blogging and the things it could change with regards to producing personal media. micro-casting and user-generated content for a very personal audience is very possible, and the technology is also there for many corporations to produce their OWN channels without needing to enforce media buy on traditional broadcast platforms.

downloading indie / corporate programs to itunes/joost/democracy player and into mobile devices or appletvs/digital tvs streaming into your home..

the technology is scarily there already. i hope i’ll be able to make it to your talk! going to the iX conference before that with my colleagues. i also just bought a Canon HV-20, sooo i might start doing proper video blogs soon, since i used to do production in uni as well.. and more power to the people -)

http://theory.isthereason.com Kevin

@brian: Ah, bring your HV-20… I want people to talk about what they have and plan to do. This talk is on the 19th. Isn’t iX on 20 – 21st June?

about

Dr. Kevin Lim recently graduated with his PhD in Communication at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Dabbling for both pragmatic and play, he seeks an ideal interplay between online and offline life, through social networking, blogging and lifecasting. He openly wishes to become a "social cyborg", where the meshing of human and networking technology would allow one's presence to be augmented by the minds of many. Read more...